sending Irish troops, “armed negotiators” he called them, to deal with the revolted colonists.  Grattan nobly reviled him for standing—­“with a metaphor in his mouth and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only hope of Ireland and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind.”  Flood collapsed under his ignoble honors.  He was not restored by returning to patriotic opposition.  Grattan’s leadership proved permanent politically and historically.  His name connotes the high water-mark of Irish statesmanship.  The parliament which he created and whose rights he defined became a standard, and his name a talisman and a challenge to succeeding generations.  The comparative oratory of Grattan and Flood is still debated.  Both after a manner were unique and unsurpassed.  Flood possessed staying power in sheer invective and sustained reasoning.  Grattan was fluent in epigram and most inspiring when condensed, and he had an immense moral advantage.  The parliament which made him a grant was independent, but it was from one of subservience that Flood drew his salary.  Henceforth Grattan was haunted by the jealous and discredited herald of himself.  A great genius, Flood lacked the keen judgment and careless magnanimity without which leadership in Ireland brings misunderstanding and disaster.  In the English House he achieved total failure.  Grattan followed him after the Union, but retained the attention if not the power of Dublin days.  Neither influenced English affairs, and their eloquence curiously was considered cold and sententious.  Their rhapsody appeared artificial, and their exposition labored.  The failure of these men was no stigma.  What is called “Irish oratory” arose with the inclusion of the Celtic under strata in politics.

Burke’s speeches were delivered to an empty house.  Though he lived out of Ireland and never became an Irish leader in Ireland, Burke had an influence in England greater than that of any Irishman before or since.  The beauty and diction of his speech fostered future parliamentary speaking.  Macaulay, Gladstone, Peel, and Brougham were suckled on him.  His farthest reaching achievement was his treatment of the French Revolution.  His single voice rolled back that storm in Europe.  But no words could retard revolution in Ireland herself.  Venal government made the noblest conservative thinking seem treason to the highest interests of the country.  The temporary success of Grattan’s parliament had been largely won by the Volunteers.  They had been drilled, ostensibly against foreign invasion, but virtually to secure reforms at home.  Their power became one with which England had to reckon, and which she never forgave.  Lord Charlemont, their president, was an estimable country gentleman, but not a national leader.  A more dashing figure appeared in the singular Earl of Bristol.  Though an Irish bishop and an English peer, he set himself in the front rank of the movement, assuming with general consent the demeanor and trappings of royalty.  He would not have hesitated to plunge Ireland into war, had he obtained Charlemont’s position.  But it was not so fated.